Pier Luigi Pizzi

Pier Luigi Pizzi (born 15 June 1930) is an Italian opera director, set and costume designer. Pizzi was born in Milan, Italy, and earned a degree in architecture at the Politecnico of Milan. Against the will of his skeptical father, he started working in the theater in 1951 with Giorgio Strehler, and then at the Teatro Tommaseo in Genoa, which he soon brought together with Giorgio De Lullo and his theater troupe Compagnia dei Giovani. Later he collaborated for many years as a set and costume designer with the director Luca Ronconi on both plays and operas. Pizzi debuted as an operatic director in 1977 with Don Giovanni in Turin. More opera productions followed, with Pizzi sketching sets and costumes as well.

Pizzi has worked in major houses including La Scala, the Burgtheater in Vienna, the Vienna State Opera, the Paris Opéra, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and the Arena di Verona, as well as the opera houses in Florence, Naples, Palermo, Parma, and the Teatro la Fenice in Venice. He has created numerous productions for the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, where he has had a working relationship for several decades.

In 1990 Pizzi opened the new Opéra Bastille in Paris with its production of Les Troyens. In December 2004, he created sets and costumes for Antonio Salieri's L'Europa riconosciuta for the reopening of the renovated La Scala, where he collaborated again after an approximately twenty-year break with director Luca Ronconi.

In October 2005 Pizzi was appointed artistic director of the Sferisterio Opera Festival in Macerata, where he has already worked as a director.